THE GREAT WALL OF LOS ANGELES

Clocking in at 2,754 feet in length, the Great Wall is one of the longest murals in the world. What's more unusual is this work of art is painted along the bank of a half mile section of the Tujunga flood control channel in Valley Glen.

The project began when the designer, Judy Baca, was asked by the Army Corps of Engineers to turn an otherwise ordinary section of the flood control channel into something beautiful. The wall along the river was never visually appealing. Baca called it, “A scar where the river once ran." Baca decided to craft an epic-sized history of Los Angeles County, going back as far as the dinosaurs. Each section of the Great Wall was developed through a system called “Imagining of Content." The members of Baca’s team known as SPARC, invited experts in various fields and they all selected which important cultural, political, artistic and historical stories to share.

When painting began, 80 young people from the Juvenile Justice Program were recruited to help work on the mural. For each section, the artists involved would take all the info they knew about the topic, create thumbnail sketches and then show everyone their work. Chosen thumbnails had color added and were then transferred to the wall in large scale by the hand of a painter. Ultimately over 400 young people helped paint the mural over the course of 5 summers, not to mention 600 gallons of paint.

Between 1976 and 1983, the mural flooded five times, but was restored in 2011 by some of the original youth who had a hand in the project from when it was just an idea and fresh paint. Even after countless hours went into it’s creation and restoration, the project is still not finished. As it exists now the mural ends with the 1950's panels. It is said the mural will reach a mile long once the 1960's through the 1990’s panels are finished. A timetable for this expansion has yet to be set.

For more information on how to find the Great Wall for yourself, please watch the video.